Comprehending Ebonics
Immigrant groups from every part of the world have routinely brought
their languages to the United States, save one: African
Americans. John Baugh explains why,
and how the term
"Ebonics" came into being. Read Full
Essay.

Ebonics is greatly misunderstood, largely because of how it gained
global attention during a racially charged education controversy. On
Dec. 18, 1996, the Oakland (California) School Board passed a
resolution declaring Ebonics to
be the
language of 28,000 African-American students in that school district.
Before then, few people had ever heard of the term Ebonics.

Dr. Robert Williams, an African-American social psychologist, coined
Ebonics in 1973 by combining the words “ebony” with “phonics” to
refer to “black sounds.” Williams and several other African-American
social scientists had gathered that year at a conference sponsored by
the National Institutes of Health to discuss the psychological
development of black children. Williams and his associates had been
displeased with the term Black English and began to ponder the
alternatives.

Williams later recounted that at the time he felt it was important
to:

define what we speak…to give clear definition to our
language. …We know that ebony means black and that phonics refers to
speech sounds or science of sounds. Thus we are really talking about
the science of black speech sounds or language. (Williams 1997a, p.14)

“Ebonics” was codified as a formal definition in 1975 when
Williams published an edited volume, Ebonics: The True Language of
Black Folks, in which he classified Ebonics as the:

linguistic and paralinguistic features which on a
concentric continuum represent the communicative competence of the West
African, Caribbean, and United States slave descendant of African
origin. (Williams, 1975)

The original Ebonics construct was intended to reflect the
multinational linguistic results of the African slave trade. Prior to
its coining, there was no single term to refer to the linguistic
consequences of this period in history. The vast majority of pertinent
studies had all been in the United States, and terminology varied from
year to year. “Nonstandard Negro English” was used in 1960s, succeeded
by “Black English” or “Black English Vernacular” in the 1970s and most
of the 1980s. Eventually “African American Vernacular English” (AAVE)
became yet another synonym for the speech of most blacks in America.
However — unlike Ebonics — “Black English” or “AAVE” never explicitly
referred to the linguistic legacy of the African slave trade beyond the
United States.

The practices underlying William's definition of Ebonics were indeed
devastating. But even after slavery was abolished in the U.S., a
recurrent combination of racial segregation and inferior educational
opportunities prevented many African Americans from adopting speech
patterns associated with Americans of European ancestry. As a result,
generations of white citizens maligned or mocked speakers of AAVE,
casting doubt on their intelligence and making their distinctive
speaking patterns the object of racist ridicule.

The Oakland School Board did not expect the hostility that met their
ill-advised assertion that Ebonics was the authentic language of their
African-American students. In the face of public derision, board
members argued that their ultimate objective was to recognize Ebonics
as a means to increase standard English proficiency among black
students, many of whom were in dire need of culturally relevant
linguistic enrichment.

Misunderstanding about the unique linguistic heritage of American
slave descendants only served to exacerbate the scorn heaped upon
Ebonics and its Oakland proponents. Critics did not seem to fully grasp
the importance of the fact that while the vast majority of immigrants
to the United States often arrived in poverty, they brought with them
an asset: their mother tongue. Speaking it in the company of other
fluent speakers allowed them to acclimate. Not so for African
Americans. Slave traders isolated slaves from other speakers of their
native languages whenever possible to restrict communication that could
lead to uprisings. This isolationist linguistic sorting often took
place in African slave factories prior to the loading of human cargo
onto ships.

The incontrovertible linguistic consequence of this practice is that
African slave descendants are the only immigrants who did not bring
their fully functioning languages with them to America. Few Americans
fully appreciate the fact that no indigenous African language survived
the Atlantic crossing intact.

Ebonics, Math Scores, and the Way Children Learn
by Richard "Doc" Rioux - “No matter how I've tried to understand
the
logic of declaring Ebonics a language, I can't escape the view that the
effort is demeaning to American children of African descent”

Remarks on Ebonics
by Robin T. Lakoff. “The
Ebonics controversy is, finally and most importantly, a fight not only
apparently about language, but in fact really about language -- that
is, language as an instrument of influence and social control.”

John
Baugh
joined Stanford University as
Professor of Education and Linguistics in 1990. Prior to his tenure at
Stanford, Dr. Baugh served as Associate Professor of Linguistics and
Foreign Language Education at the University of Texas at Austin and as
Assistant Professor of Linguistics, Black Studies, Sociology, and
Anthropology at Swarthmore College. Dr. Baugh has published extensively
in the fields of Anthropology, Education, Legal Affairs, Linguistics,
Sociology and Urban Studies. His work bridges theoretical and applied
linguistics, with particular attention to matters of policy and social
equity in the fields of education, medicine, and the law. He has
conducted extensive research regarding the social stratification of
linguistic diversity within the U.S., Austria, Brazil, Hungary, South
Africa, and the UK, and is actively engaged in ongoing research that
examines the evolution and dissemination of English and other European
languages in post-colonial contexts throughout the world. Dr. Baugh is
a past president of the American Dialect Society and a member of the
usage advisory committee for the American Heritage English Dictionary.
He has also served as consultant on several documentary films related
to American language and as an expert witness in court cases where
matters of voice recognition and language attitudes have been central.
Dr. Baugh received his B.A. in Speech and Rhetoric at Temple University
and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Linguistics at the University of
Pennsylvania. He currently sits on the Boards of the Consortiuum of
Social Science Associations, Eastside Prep, Raising a Reader, and
Project Pericles.